Pragmatics
Study of meaning in context
Family resemblance
Members resemble each other but aren’t equally as good representatives for a word family
Graded membership
Determined by degree of closeness to prototype
What are family resemblance and graded membership?
Culturally dependent
Utterance
Any stretch of talk by a person followed and preceded by speaker’s silence
Three components of speech acts (Speech Act Theory, 1969)
Locution
Illocution
Perlocution
Locution
Message
Illocution
Intention
Perlocution
Hearer’s reaction to speaker’s message
Felicity conditions
Preparatory condition
Propositional content condition
Sincerity condition
Essential condition
What is the felicity condition’s purpose?
They need to be fulfilled for a speech act to be performed
Preparatory condition
Authority of speaker and circumstances of the speech act are appropriate to its successful performance
Propositional content condition
Participants understand language
Sincerity condition
Speech act is performed seriously and sincerely
Essential condition
Speaker intends that an utterance be acted upon by addressee
Speech act taxonomy
Representatives
Directives
Commissives
Expressives
Declarations
Representatives
Says things which are true about the world (suggestion, complaint)
Directives
Attempts to get listener to carry out an action in the future (command, request)
Commissives
Way to ensure that the speaker will/won’t do something in the future (promise, guarantee)
Expressives
Show speaker’s emotional state (thanking, apology)
Declarations
Can bring about a change in the world, institutional (effects, verdicts)
Directness
Direct relation between form and function
Indirectness
Mismatch between form and function
Grice’s co-operative principle
Maxim of quantity
Maxim of quality
Maxim of relation
Maxim of manner
Maxim of quantity
Contribution needs to be as informative as required, not more or less
Maxim of quality
Don’t say what you believe to be false, don’t speak about what you don’t know
Maxim of relation
Make your contribution relevant
Maxim of manner
Be clear and brief
Non-adherences to maxims
Violating a maxim
Infringing a maxim
Opting out from a maxim
Flouting a maxim
Violating a maxim
Failure to fulfill a maxim to mislead hearer
Infringing a maxim
Failure to observe a maxim due to imperfect linguistic peformance
Opting out from a maxim
Unwillingness to cooperate without wanting to appear uncooperative
Flouting a maxim
Breaking a maxim in an open way so that it’s obvious to all concerned